The ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT lacks AMD’s highly touted UVD hardware video processing engine, a feature highlighted in roadmaps. Not only that, AMD continues to tout its entire ATI Radeon HD
2000-series as having UVD, when in fact it is only the 65nm HD 2600 and
HD 2400 series that possess the hardware decoding capabilities.

Scott Wasson from TechReport came across the issue while testing the UVD features. "True to my word, I set out yesterday to test HD video decode acceleration on a Radeon HD 2900 XT using an HD DVD drive and a version of PowerDVD supplied by AMD for such purposes," he said. "To my surprise, CPU utilization during playback on our Core 2 Extreme X6800 test system ran between 40 and 50%, well above what one would expect from a solution with full HD video decode acceleration."

Smooth HD Video Playback with UVDATI Avivo HD technology is designed for high-end, high definition video playback in home theater systems. Free your CPU to power other applications with new UVD (Unified Video Decoder) hardware processing of HD video formats.

Wasson was not the only journalist fooled by AMD’s presentations and guides, Marco Chiapetta of HotHardware and Ryan Shrout of PC Perspective have become victims as well.

AMD public relations, speaking off the record, tells DailyTech that all trade publications should have known UVD was not present on the 2900 XT. One representative cites the Radeon 2900 family introduction (PDF), claiming, "ATI Avivo HD is a technology platform that includes a broad set of capabilities offered by certain ATI Radeon HD 2000 GPUs. Not all products have all features and full enablement of some ATI AvivoHD capabilities may require complementary products."

Geo Rule from Beyond3D points out that other AMD guidance did indicate UVD was not present on R600. More specifically, he adds that the UVD feature slide never explicitly states UVD is present on Radeon HD 2900, while the same slide states UVD is present on Radeon HD 2400 and Radeon HD 2600.

When asked why AMD never contacted any trade publications to correct the misconception that UVD was included in Radeon 2900, our contact declined to comment. He did add that full HD acceleration is present on the R600 ASIC, and it will eventually be enabled via driver updates.

“Unfortunately, try as we might, we could not get UVD to work with the current drivers provided by AMD and the PowerDVD release that is supposed to enable the hardware acceleration on HD 2000 series parts,” states AnandTech Senior CPU and Graphics Editor Derek Wilson. “We will have to take a second look at hardware decode when AMD and CyberLink or Intervideo get their software in order.”

AMD has not released a driver that takes advantage of the ATI Radeon HD
2000-series multimedia features nor has a software company released a
player that takes advantage of the hardware.

ATI board partners potentially face the same false advertising claims. Today, no less than four AIB partners claim UVD support on their Radeon HD 2900 XT boxart. Surprisingly absent from that list: Built-by-ATI boards.